A LIFE TO REMEMBER - Swadesh Ranjan Bose Swadesh Ranjan Bose was born in 1928 at Kashipur, Barisal, Bengal, in presentday

Bangladesh (then part of British India). His mother was Kusum Kumari Bose and his father was Nirodh Chandra Bose. His father worked as a scribe and secretary in a Nawab family. Swadesh Bose lost his mother when he was an infant of 18 months and lost his father at the age of 16 years. At the young age of 11, Swadesh Bose became active in the free India movement. He was inspired to act by Subhash Chandra Bose and Manabendra Ray. In 1944, he enrolled in Barisals B.M. College and became involved with progressive student political activities. He was an active member of the Chhatro Federation, a well-known leftist student organization. In 1947, India became independent from Britain but was partitioned into two countries, India and Pakistan. The state of Bengal was split in two, with West Bengal remaining in India and East Bengal becoming East Pakistan, the eastern wing of Pakistan. From 1947, Swadesh Bose became a student leader in the Bengali mother tongue movement in East Pakistan. After partition, there were violent Hindu-Muslim riots in Barisal, East Pakistan, and Swadesh Boses brothers and sisters all emigrated to West Bengal, India. Swadesh Bose, however, did not join his family and stayed behind alone in East Pakistan. He was residing in the B.M. College dormitory and supported himself by tutoring many students. In March 1948, Swadesh Bose, along with other students Mozammel Hoq, Abdul Khalek, and Kazi Bahauddin, published a manifesto in favor of making Bengali a national language in Pakistan and announcing a national strike on 11 March in support of the Bengali language movement. The Pakistani government had declared that only Urdu would be the national language of Pakistan, despite the fact that the majority of Pakistans population was Bengali-speaking. On 10 March, 1948, the Pakistani authorities arrested Swadesh Bose (then age 20) along with some of his classmates. The Pakistan government kept him imprisoned on various charges for most of the next eight years. Swadesh Bose was sometimes released from jail for a few hours and then arrested immediately on other trumped up charges. He was subjected to severe physical and mental torture while in prison. He sustained injuries to his head and had permanent damage to one of his arms as a result of repeated beatings in prison. Although he had been an exceptionally bright student, he was not allowed to study or take his B.A. exams while in jail. The Pakistani authorities tried repeatedly to convince Swadesh Bose to move to India, but he refused to leave. Swadesh Bose secretly continued political activities from prison and became an expert at chess.

When Swadesh Bose was finally released from prison in 1956, he was skeletally thin and in very poor health. He lived as a boarder with a family and tutored numerous students to meet his expenses. B.M. College would not readmit him because of his prison record. Despite his excellent previous academic record, he could not secure admission to any of the city colleges due to his political activities and imprisonment. Finally, he enrolled at a little known rural institution called Chakhar College and took his BA exams there in 1958. Based on his exceptional marks on the exam, he secured a place in the M.A. program in the Department of Economics at Dhaka University and enrolled there in 1958. While he studied in Dhaka, he was under 24-hour government surveillance and was required to report to the Lalbagh Police Station every week. He completed his MA in Economics in 1960 with high marks. However, because of his prison record, he was denied a teaching position at Dhaka University and was not given clearance for any government position. In 1961, he went to Karachi to take a position with the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE). In 1962, he received a Ford Foundation scholarship to the Ph.D. program in the Department of Economics at Harvard University . However, at the last minute, his US student visa was revoked based on his previous leftist student activities. He continued working at the PIDE in Karachi. In March 1963, he came to East Pakistan and married Noorjahan Begum, the widow of his political friend Mohammed Imadullah. The interfaith marriage caused an uproar even in progressive circles. Swadesh Bose took Noorjahan and her son Jaseem to Karachi, where they lived until September 1963. After returning to Karachi with Noorjahan, Swadesh Bose was under constant police surveillance. In September 1963, he took leave from the PIDE and entered the Ph.D. program at the Department of Economics at Cambridge University on a Ford Foundation scholarship. In 1965, Swadesh Bose completed his Ph.D. dissertation, titled Economic Cooperation Among South Asian Countries, With Special Reference to India and Pakistan. The dissertation outlned ...The Cambridge University Press wanted to publish the thesis but the Pakistan Government refused to permit publication and confiscated the document. In 1965, Swadesh Bose moved back to Karachi with his family and rejoined the PIDE. This was a period of growing resentment among Bengalis that the central Pakistani government was neglecting the economic, linguistic, and political rights of those in East Pakistan, the more populous wing of Pakistan. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a Bengali from East Pakistan, emerged as the charismatic leader of the Awami League political party, which had a growing following in East Pakistan. In 1966, the Awami League put forth a Six-Point Program, calling for

constitutional changes that would result in a loose federation with greater autonomy for East Pakistan. Swadesh Bose and Dr. Nurul Islam at PIDE secretly supported this Six-Point Program and decided to work on a plan to transfer the PIDE to East Pakistan. They worked tirelessly to convince the PIDE that because East Pakistan was less developed economically, it would be logical to move the PIDE headquarters to Dhaka, East Pakistan. National elections were scheduled for late 1970 and the Awami League was gaining momentum. In November 1970, a massive cyclone hit East Pakistan and hundreds of thousands perished. The federal governments response to the cyclone was severely criticised by leaders in East Pakistan and the international community. The elections were held immediately after the cyclone and the Awami League won a massive victory, emerging as the single largest party in the National Assembly by winning 160 seats (out of 300) and winning 288 out of 300 seats in the East Pakistan Assembly. In the midst of all this turmoil, the PIDE was moved to Dhaka, East Pakistan. Swadesh Bose moved to Dhaka with his family (which now also included two daughters Monica and Anita) on January 1, 1971 and started working to set up the new office of the PIDE. In the coming weeks, negotiations continued but the Awami League was not allowed to lead the government and the National Assembly was not formed. On March 25, Bangladesh declared its independence and the Pakistani authorities captured Sheikh Mujiib and started armed warfare in Dhaka and all over East Pakistan. The Pakistani army was killing intellectuals and especially targeting hindus. Swadesh Bose and family hid in the the countryside for several months. In May 1971, with the help of Daniel Thorner and many others, Swadesh Bose fled by foot across the border to India. He stayed in Kolkata during the remainder of the Liberation War and served as a member of the planning cell of the Mujibnagar government, which was based in Kolkata during the war. Swadesh Bose returned to to a free Bangladesh in December 1971. The PIDE was reformed as the Bangladesh Institute of Development Economics and Swadesh Bose served as its acting director. In 1973, he took a sabbatical and went to Oxford to conduct research for the Queen Elizabeth House. In 1974, the World Bank extended him an offer to work in the Research Department in Washington, DC. He relocated to the US and joined the World Bank in November 1974. In 1975, Sheikh Mujib was assassinated and the military took control of Bangladesh. Swadesh Bose and his family remained in the US but visited Bangladesh frequently. He spent 20 years with the World Bank, spending most of his career on agricultural economics in Africa. He devoted many years to projects in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Malawi. [details]

He retired from the World Bank in 1994. He was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 1998, though it is likely that he had begun suffering from the disease much earlier. He and Noorjahan moved to Bangladesh in 2002. After 2004, Swadesh Bose had severe difficulty speaking and writting, but continued to be extremely alert and understood everything said to him. He was able to communicate by typing and emailing for some time, but gradually even those abilities were lost. In December 2008, Swadesh Bose voted in the historic elections that took place in Bangladesh after many years. Just shy of his 82nd birthday, he passed away on December 3, 2009 at home in Dhaka. On hearing the news of his death, Bangladesh President Zillur Rahman said, "Swadesh Bose raised his voice against the discriminatory economic policies of the then Pakistani regime, which inspired the freedom-seeking people of the country." Siddique Ahmed